am unable to give exact Measures as requested. They are regular Giants,
and eating as such. We shall want more com very soon, for you never saw
such chicks to eat. Bigger than Bantams. Going on at this rate, they
ought to be a bird for show, rank as they are. Plymouth Rocks won't be
in it. Had a scare last night thinking that cat was at them, and when I
looked out at the window could have sworn I see her getting in under the
wire. The chicks was all awake and pecking about hungry when I went out,
but could not see anything of the cat. So gave them a peck of corn, and
fastened up safe. Shall be glad to know if the Feeding to be continued
as directed. Food you mixed is pretty near all gone, and do not like to
mix any more myself on account of the accident with the pudding. With
best wishes from us both, and soliciting continuance of esteemed
favours,

"Respectfully yours,

"ALFRED NEWTON SKINNER."

The allusion towards the end referred to a milk pudding with which some
Herakleophorbia II. had got itself mixed with painful and very nearly
fatal results to the Skinners.

But Mr. Bensington, reading between the lines saw in this rankness of
growth the attainment of his long sought goal. The next morning he
alighted at Urshot station, and in the bag in his hand he carried,
sealed in three tins, a supply of the Food of the Gods sufficient for
all the chicks in Kent.

It was a bright and beautiful morning late in May, and his corns were so
much better that he resolved to walk through Hickleybrow to his farm. It
was three miles and a half altogether, through the park and villages and
then along the green glades of the Hickleybrow preserves. The trees were
all dusted with the green spangles of high spring, the hedges were full
of stitchwort and campion and the woods of blue hyacinths and purple
orchid; and everywhere there was a great noise of birds--thrushes,
blackbirds, robins, finches, and many more--and in one warm corner of
the park some bracken was unrolling, and there was a leaping and rushing
of fallow deer.

These things brought back to Mr. Bensington his early and forgotten
delight in life; before him the promise of his discovery grew bright and
joyful, and it seemed to him that indeed he must have come upon the
happiest day in his life. And when in the sunlit run by the sandy bank
under the shadow of the pine trees he saw the chicks that had eaten the
food he had mixed for them, gigantic and gawky, bigger al